21 December 2006

Recently, I read a comment on another blog posted by a "Tom." I replied to him with an (elongated) comment of my own. I have copied here both his comment and mine.

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What everybody seems to forget about colonization is ... yes ... it was occupation.

Definitely.

It also transformed the countries into nation states with a working government (e.g. Egypt, not that I mean to imply that the currect Egyptian government is good (or bad), but it is a substantial improvement over having no government, just armed factions killing eachother).

Also most countries were made independant, in steps, by the occupiers, not the occupied.Therefore yes, colonies were militarily occupied, yes they were exploited. They also advanced hundreds of years and the average income of the people rose incredible amounts during this occupation. Culture and science blossomed like never before in these countries.

Tom

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Dear Tom,

i have a plan for you. i would like to help you advance in your life. i am a very rich man and also own much property, and have immense and enviable political clout. my plan for you will commence soon, with or without your consent, once i locate where you are.

my plan is simple: i will break down your door, move in, turn your living room into my own private barracks, complete with mounted gun near the front entrance. my first step towards improving your life will be to force you at gunpoint to fix the door that i broke down.

next you will quit your job and immediately begin an acceleratd reading program in which you will read and report on 2 books per day. these will be in MY language. you will also find time during the day to make me food, make yourself some (lesser) food, dig in your basement for any valuable raw materials that i deem important for you to dig up. i will take these raw materials and sell them, or use them in other endevours, but in any case you will be the one to haul them away, but they will be considered mine. i hereby declare that you are not worthy of them.

you will surely find time to do all this and more, since you will work for me now, you savage. you like that? too bad.

oh, and i will turn your children against your decadent family traditions and religion, and teach them my own versions of these, cuz all your stuff sucks, since you've been advancing much too slowly for my taste. you've been holding us all back, you lazy good-for-nothing brute.

and technology. why are you so slow with your technology? when was the last time you updated your computer? how do you expect to serve us in any modern effecient way with a piece-of-crap dinosaur like that? here's an idea: i'll set up an assembly line in your bathroom so you can start assembling computers that i can sell on the outside. i'll give you one or two of these to use in figuring out new and innovative ways for me to use you.

all this will surely help you advance in you life, primarily because we will be moving at a much faster pace then you've been moving in your life. so please respond here by telling me where you are located so i can get over there as soon as possible.

--NOTE: the above sarcasm was brought to you by the United Fruit Company.

12 December 2006

The incessant hatred, the numb apathy, the harrowing abandonment, the gargantuan beatings, the gory brutality, the vulgar slander, the egoist dismissal, the cruel deprivation, the political propaganda, the ambiguous facades, the spiritual confusion, the suffocating captivity, the breathless exhaustion, the humanity torn asunder,

02 December 2006

or faceless crowds that you can easily dismiss as wrong, irrelevant, peasants, misguided, unworthy, untrustworthy, different, heretical, decadent, uncivilized?_In the end, we all have it within us to see the good in each other, and to be able to hear what the other is saying. Lubnan is quickly schisming into pieces, unless everyone opens their eyes, ears and minds to their neighbors. The old corrupt ways just don't accomplish anything anymore.::

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About Me

:: Ibn Bint Jbeil is Arabic for.... (Click for the whole story) :: i was (only OFFICIALLY) born in the village of Bint Jbeil in the south of Lebanon :: i am thankful that Allah provides me with daily sustenance, mercy, inspiration and learning :: i have 3 children, whose innocence is my compass :: i teach and make art, and i make other things, for instance things out of words :: life is wraught with a bunch of abstract notions that i am trying to comprehend :: i also make trouble, 99.99% of the time inadvertantly ::